Ground-floor Attics: Canterbury's V-huts

Abstract

Alfred C. Barker's 1864 photograph of V-huts amidst unkempt grasses bracketted by flax bushes is well-known. Less often reproduced are his drawings of his own V-hut: Studdingsail Hall, though texts, such as Anna Petersen's New Zealanders At Home and the Drummonds' At Home in New Zealand, reproduce two similar Barker sketches drawn on the 27th and the 28th February 1851. The drawings were also reproduced three dimensionally, almost 100 years after they were drawn, as part of Canterbury Museum's "Canterbury Colonists Exhibition" (1950-1951). This paper examines the references to V-huts which permeate 1850s journals, diaries and newspapers, concluding with an examination of the Barker drawings and the Canterbury Museum replication of one of them.